You are currently viewing our forum as a guest, which gives you limited access to view most discussions and access our other features. By joining our free community, you will have access to additional post topics, communicate privately with other members (PM), view blogs, respond to polls, upload content, and access many other special features. Registration is fast, simple and absolutely free, so please join our community today! Just click here to register. You should turn your Ad Blocker off for this site or certain features may not work properly. If you have any problems with the registration process or your account login, please contact us by clicking here.

Religion evolves and endures

I reckon that in much of the world religion has proven itself to be the most enduring and evolving, in the sense of adaptativeness, of institutions, its outlived communism and arguably is in the process of out living capitalism and its ideological appendages, the societies which are based upon objective or accidential atheism seem to be suffering from a myriad of problems, personal and social, therefore is it not worth while to give religion analytical attention if not praise?

Plus, given Eric Fromm's frame of reference or definition that ideas which provide an ethical orientation and devotional object qualify as "religious", which I think is sound, there are a lot of accidential religions out there, they're mainly bad religions, like the idolatrous or atavistic religions or superstitions of the ancient world.

NB Bitches.

Last edited by Lark; 01-16-2011 at 08:25 PM.
Reason: add NB

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.
Chapter IV, p. 448. - Adam Smith, Book 3, The Wealth of Nations

whether or not you credit psychoanalysis itself, the fact remains that we all must, to the greatest extent possible, understand one another's minds as our own; the very survival of humanity has always depended on it. - Open Culture

I reckon that in much of the world religion has proven itself to be the most enduring and evolving, in the sense of adaptativeness, of institutions, its outlived communism and arguably is in the process of out living capitalism and its ideological appendages, the societies which are based upon objective or accidential atheism seem to be suffering from a myriad of problems, personal and social, therefore is it not worth while to give religion analytical attention if not praise?

Religion certainly merits analytical attention, much more than it usually gets. Your comparison is a bit skewed, however. You are comparing "religion" overall with specific political or economic systems like communism and capitalism. It would make a more direct comparison to ask whether religion has outlived politics, or government, or the economy; or whether a specific religion like Judaism has outlived a specific economic system like capitalism.

As for which institutions are most enduring and evolving/adaptive, one might consider the family, the military, or even the brothel. All societies raise young, fight from time to time, and provide some outlet for human passions.

Belief is stronger than any single religion. Belief is fundamental, essential, and empowering. You say religion evolves and endures, but you really speak of belief. Religion is just a morsel of the whole phenomenon.

Until very recently religion was defined by geography. A map of the world is a map of religion. But with the advent of the global village various religions have come face to face for the first time. And they discovered that each one claimed to be the one true religion from God.

Now from a simple logical point of view they can't all be right. So this produced a problem for religion. At first we tried to solve the problem by going to war and so we had the war of religions. But after quite a lot of bloodshed the religions settled on a compromise of live and let live called secularism, where each had freedom of religion but each was separated from the power of the State.

Unfortunately one political religion does not accept the Universal Declaration of Human Rights or secularism or the separation of religion and the State and have declared jihad in line with the tradition of their holy book.

But the cat is out of the bag. And all religions are no longer separated by geography but are face to face in the global village.

Victor isn't this a bit to generalistic?? I know many moderate adherents to this religion who would be very offended at this generalisation.

It is the extremists and terrorists who do this in the name of their religion, and it is by no means embraced by all!

When we make such generalisations, if we are responsible for influencing others, albeit unknowingly, we are potentially setting the stage for prejudice.

I would be horrified if non-judeo-christian people were to make judgement that because those living in Jonestown purported to be Christian, therefore it can be safely assumed that all Christians are fanatics!!

"Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible." — Richard P. Feynman
"Never tell a person a thing is impossible. G*d/the Universe may have been waiting all this time for someone ignorant enough of the impossibility to do just that thing." author unknown

Fifty-seven Islamic States have publicly and openly repudiated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights including the Right to Free Speech.

In fact these fifty-seven Islamic States say that free speech is offensive to them. However the Universal Declaration of Human Rights says that free speech means nothing without the right to offend.

Perhaps this is why these people have moved here? ...and it looks like Afghanistan and Iraq will also again revert to these ideologies once we withdraw???

"Study hard what interests you the most in the most undisciplined, irreverent and original manner possible." — Richard P. Feynman
"Never tell a person a thing is impossible. G*d/the Universe may have been waiting all this time for someone ignorant enough of the impossibility to do just that thing." author unknown

Until very recently religion was defined by geography. A map of the world is a map of religion. But with the advent of the global village various religions have come face to face for the first time. And they discovered that each one claimed to be the one true religion from God.

Now from a simple logical point of view they can't all be right. So this produced a problem for religion.

Of course all religions can't be right in claiming to be the "one true religion from God". There is no such thing. Each does contain truth, however, and many common threads and themes can be found in the most apparently dissimilar of faiths. Joseph Campbell explored this in many of his writings. It is much like the story of the blind men and the elephant; each man's impression of the elephant is accurate, but only to a point. The real falsehood is to insist that the elephant is only what each individual man perceives.

Religion is about more than God and I know many evangelists who would claim not to be religious or to believe in a religion, they've gone beyond the liberal attack on so called organised religion and even protestantism to a totally radical position.

All for ourselves, and nothing for other people, seems, in every age of the world, to have been the vile maxim of the masters of mankind.
Chapter IV, p. 448. - Adam Smith, Book 3, The Wealth of Nations

whether or not you credit psychoanalysis itself, the fact remains that we all must, to the greatest extent possible, understand one another's minds as our own; the very survival of humanity has always depended on it. - Open Culture